The field of the invention is systems and methods for magnetic resonance imaging (“MRI”). More particularly, the invention relates to systems and methods for estimating phase measurements in MRI.
Numerous emerging MR applications are in need of accurate phase measurements. One of the main challenges with phase imaging is the ambiguity associated with such a regime. Phase offsets, noise, phase wrapping, and their interactions with each other introduce uncertainties and irregularities that so far have only been met with spatial regularization: assumptions about the smoothness of the underlying data. This inherently reduces the spatial resolution and accuracy of the measurements.